Toyota churns out hybrids with 10 million sold

Like them or not Toyota know how to build cars with hybrid engines.

Since the launch of the first Prius in 1997 they have now sold over 10 million hybrids under the Toyota and Lexus brands.

Hybrid sales commenced with the first-generation Prius, which was sold only in Japan from 1997 to 2000.

An upgraded “generation 1.5” model was launched in the U.S. in 2001 and became a hit in LA.

But Prius sales didn’t really take off until the 2004 introduction of the second-generation model, which was larger and generally better suited to a wider array of consumers.

Since then, Toyota has added dozens more hybrid models, to the point where it now claims to have 34 distinct hybrid models available globally.

The original Prius Liftback and the recent Prius Prime plug-in hybrid share the current-generation Toyota New Global Architecture platform.

Toyota surpassed 10 million global hybrid sales just nine months after reaching 9 million sales.

That makes the third time in a row that Toyota has increased its global hybrid-production total by 1 million units in less than a year.

Only a small share ofPrius are plug In Hybrids with around  75,000PHEV units sold.